The Shockoe Examiner Blogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Monument Avenue

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

"New View of A Western Section of Richmond..." - 1906 view of the Fan with Richmond College in Background.

"New View of A Western Section of Richmond Which Has Recently Built Up By Leaps and Bounds" - The Photograph Which Is Produced Here, Was Taken from the Roof of the Chesterfield at Shafer and Franklin Streets.

- From the Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 25, 1906.

Now this is a View! 105 years ago. Not a clear image - but about the only one I have come across showing Richmond College (the big building on the right) and its orientation facing downtown.

Click on the image to see a larger view. See the entire article HERE (the article continues on this page). From Chronicling America.

- Ray B.

Monument Avenue Wiki

Postcard, 1907 - Monument Avenue as seen from Stuart Circle.

It is about time we mention the Wiki web site focuses on Monument Avenue. It is maintained by Coleen Butler Rodriguez and the Monument Avenue Preservation Society. Coleen has helped document who designed and built what on Monument Avenue - and more. Here's the description of their site:

"This wiki showcases the houses and buildings on the portion of the avenue within the national historic designation. This historic area begins at Birch Street in the east and continues west along Monument Avenue to Roseneath Avenue. Additionally, it includes the blocks of Allen and Davis Avenues immediately to the north and south of Monument where they intersect it. The objective of this wiki is to gather baseline data on each contributing structure and to gather facts and lore of the history from the people who have lived here or who have known these buildings. Baseline data includes address, architect or builder, date built, first owner, references for the baseline data, and a photograph. History and lore can be anything, really, concerning the past of the buildings! Keep it clean and honest. Our goal is to share this unique neighborhood with each other and the larger world interested in preserving historic places in the United States, and to capture history that slips through our fingers with each passing generation. We hope you will join us." - Monument Avenue Wiki

- Ray B.

Contributors:

Ray Bonis:

Ray worked at VCU Libraries' James Branch Cabell Library from 1989 until 2021. He is the co-author of Virginia Commonwealth University (2006) and Greetings from Richmond (2009) - an architectural history of the city.

Selden Richardson:

Architectural historian and author of Built By Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia (2006), The Tri-State Gang in Richmond: Murder and Robbery in the Great Depression. (2012), and Richmond Murder & Mayhem (2023)

On History:

"The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow."
-- G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) from his "Autobiography of an Historian," An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).

Key Dates in Richmond History
(more to follow)

1737 – William Mayo laid out the original street plan for the town of Richmond on land provided by William Byrd II.

1742 – Chartered as a town

1780 – Virginia’s state capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.

1782 – Incorporated as a city.

1788 - Virginia State Capitol building completed.

1860-1865 – Serves as capital of the Confederate States of America.

1910 - Manchester, the city located just south of the James, is consolidated with Richmond.

1949 - Oliver Hill (1907-2007) elected to City Council, first African American since Reconstruction.

1968 - Virginia Commonwealth University created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute.

1977 - Henry Marsh elected as first African American mayor of Richmond.

2009 – Shockoe Examiner founded.